Deploy and Host Blinko on Railway

Blinko is an open-source, self-hosted note-taking app for quick, card-style notes. You write in Markdown, tag notes, attach files and track to-dos. If you connect an AI provider of your choice, Blinko can answer questions over your notes and suggest tags. Your notes stay in your own database.

About Hosting Blinko

Blinko runs as one Node.js server with a PostgreSQL database. On first start it applies its database migrations, then serves the web app and API on port 1111. Uploaded files, the local search index and scheduled backups are written to /app/.blinko, so that directory needs a persistent volume. This template deploys the official blinkospace/blinko image pinned to release 1.8.9, plus Railway's PostgreSQL with its own volume. It generates the login-signing secret, connects the database over the private network and sets the public URL from the Railway domain. A health check on /health holds traffic until the server is ready.

Common Use Cases

A private, self-hosted place for quick notes, links and to-dos that you control
A personal knowledge base you can search and chat with using your own AI provider key
A small shared notebook for a family or team, with accounts created by the admin

Dependencies for Blinko Hosting

PostgreSQL (Railway PostgreSQL service included in this template)
A persistent volume for uploads, the search index and backups (included)

Deployment Dependencies

Blinko source code: https://github.com/blinkospace/blinko
Blinko 1.8.9 release notes: https://github.com/blinkospace/blinko/releases/tag/1.8.9
Blinko documentation: https://docs.blinko.space
Official Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/blinkospace/blinko

Implementation Details

First sign-up becomes the admin. Open your Railway domain right after the deploy finishes and register: the first account gets the superadmin role, and public sign-up is then turned off until you enable it in Blinko's settings.
AI is optional. Blinko works without AI. To use it, add your own provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama and others) and API key in Blinko's AI settings. No AI key is part of this template.
Services: Blinko (blinkospace/blinko:1.8.9, pinned by digest, volume at /app/.blinko, port 1111) and Postgres (volume at /var/lib/postgresql/data).
Variables set for you: DATABASE_URL (reference to Postgres), JWT_SECRET (generated, signs logins and API tokens), NEXTAUTH_SECRET (same value, kept for older Blinko docs), NEXTAUTH_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL (your Railway domain, used for RSS links) and PORT=1111.
Updating: change the Blinko service image to a newer tag; migrations run on start. Take a backup of the Postgres database first.

Why Deploy Blinko on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying Blinko on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.